A major Picasso exhibition is heading to the US in 2021

A major Picasso exhibition is coming to the US next year. Organized in partnership with Musée National Picasso-Paris, the exhibition will make its sole US appearance in the Frist Art Museum in Nashville to celebrate the institution's 20th anniversary.

The exhibition, called Picasso. Figures, is being staged as a collaboration between the Frist Art Museum and the Musée National-Picasso in Paris, home of the world’s largest public collection of Picasso's work. The landmark show will run in the Frist's Ingram Gallery from February 5 until May 2, 2021 to kickstart the Nashville museum's 20th anniversary, and will be the exhibition's sole US appearance in 2021 before traveling to the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec in Canada in June 2021.

“The selection of the Frist in Nashville as the only US venue for this show is a wonderful testament to our city’s growing national and international stature as a cultural destination,” said Frist Art Museum director and CEO Susan H. Edwards.

Frist Broadway Exterior — The exhibition will run from February to May 2021 ©John Schweikert

Highlights of the exhibition include masterpieces like Portrait of Dora Maar, the Bathers, and Mother and Child. Overall it will feature approximately 75 paintings, works on paper, and sculptures borrowed from Paris that highlight Pablo Picasso's fascination with the human figure.

“Viewers will see how, as Picasso continuously deconstructed and then remade the body, he was also recasting the history of figuration as a combination of his own psychological view of humanity and observations about the disruptive nature of life in the 20th century,” added Frist Art Museum chief curator Mark Scala.

Picasso Les Baigneuses.jpg — Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). The Bathers, Biarritz, summer 1918. Oil on canvas,10 5/8 x 8 5/8 in. Musée national Picasso-Paris, Pablo Picasso Acceptance inLieu, 1979. MP61. © 2020 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / SylvieChan-Liat

Following Picasso, Figures, the museum will host exhibitions from Kara Walker, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, American Art Deco and Medieval Bologna for its blockbuster 20th-anniversary celebrations. Tickets for Picasso, Figures will go on sale on January 18, with prices to be confirmed.